let your dreams take wing
by Marenke
Summary: The knife the assassin never reached Yennefer and the baby - it slid by them, cutting a few strands of the baby's hair, but leaving her otherwise unscathed. The knife fell, uselessly, to the ground, and Yennefer's legs gave out as she clutched the child, falling into the sand like a puppet with its strings cut.
1. Chapter 1

The knife the assassin threw never reached Yennefer and the baby - it slid by them, cutting a few strands of the baby's hair, but leaving her otherwise unscathed. The knife fell, uselessly, to the ground, and Yennefer's legs gave out as she clutched the child, falling into the sand like a puppet with its strings cut.

Looking at the baby, Yennefer stared at her blue eyes, the kid tracking her hand as she mussed up her fine, black hair, and Yennefer left out a shaky laugh.

The queen was dead, the baby had no mother and especially no father, and all Yennefer wanted was a child to call her own. It was like the stars had aligned to give her this gift.

"What had your mother named you, hmm?" Yennefer asked, rifling through the blankets as if it is going to give her any sort of answers. Finding nothing, not even an embroidery, Yennefer sighed. "Seems like it's up to me, huh? Ophie, then."

The baby - Ophie, Yennefer reminded herself, chiding as she played with the little child's fingers - stared at her, and Yennefer gave her a smile.

* * *

It's not like Yennefer can come back to the Aedirn court with a baby in tow - especially so a baby the king had tried to murder - so instead, she portals to her rooms, grabs what she needs and what she wants, swindles a few more coins from the treasury than strictly needed, finishing everything up by writing a strongly worded letter that amounts, more or less, to "go solve your own fucking messes. Love, Yennefer!" before she portals away.

She went from town to town, offering her services in exchange for coin. The men look at her warily, from the sparks in her fingers to the baby in her arms, and then close the door. _Mages_, they say, full of reason as Yennefer gritted her teeth, _don't have children._ They thought of her as a conwoman, a farce, and Yennefer makes sure all of their hair falls off by morning, when she is already long gone.

The women, who look at Yennefer behind their husbands' backs and holding their own children, stopping the older kids from seeing her, however - especially the mothers, with kind eyes that Yennefer never saw on her own mother - gave her a few coins, what little they could spare, and begged for spells and potions that will help them: _something for pain, my baby is teething, please, and he said that if my child cries once more...; an abortive, my husband, he…; a poison, ma'am, for a rainy day; my little girl has a fever, is there any herb you could recommend? _

Yennefer still needs to feed Ophie and herself; she accepts these requests and asks her own questions about child rearing. It wasn't like she had any experience: her bad back never allowed her near her half-siblings, her stepfather thinking her a cursed child and her mother too coward (was she?) to do anything. The women smile, correct the way Yennefer holds Ophie, chat with her for a while, before their husbands notice their too sudden disappearances and start connecting the dots.

It feels odd to Yennefer that these women, whose names she doesn't know, stick longer in her memory that the ever rotating cast of royals she saw at her time in court.

* * *

Ophie is four when she settled, at last, in Rinde. Yennefer used the last of her money to get herself a small house, and used magic to make the first floor into her shop. The baby that should've never survived grew up between stacks of dried herbs and with the smell of magic on her nose, and filling Yennefer's world with laughter she thought impossible before.

Sometimes, she thought of Kalis, when it was unbearably warm and humid, sticking to her skin like a curse, and notices how Ophie and the dead woman are similar - the curve of the nose, the shade of her hair. Some things, however, are from Yennefer: the old language gives Ophie her first words and a smile Yennefer sees sometimes in a mirror, the same smile she gives when she sees nothing of that foolish king on _her _daughter.

The passage of time, however, scares her: to Yennefer's too long lifespan, it feels like Ophie goes from a defenseless little thing, depending on Yennefer to find her a milk mother, to an almost fully mobile human being, wobbly knees and scraps on her hands from falling and picking herself up as she learned to walk. She learns to talk in seemingly the blink of an eye, and to ask questions, growing so much Yennefer felt as if she was having to find new clothes for her at every turn of the clock.

Meanwhile, Yennefer stays still on the passage of time, unchanging. The first time she realized that her little girl - her Ophie, the baby that survived an assassination attempt at mere days old - would one day do what Yennefer couldn't: shrivel and die.

She couldn't let that happen.


	2. Chapter 2

Geralt was trying to save his… Well, whatever the fuck Jaskier was to him. _ Nuisance_, maybe. So he kicked the door to the mayor's home until it gave out and looked around the kitchen, trying to find a door to the inside so he could find the sorceress, get the djinn out of Jaskier and then go back to trying to get himself a few hours of sleep. The bags under his eyes were already getting their own eye bags, and all he wanted was the sweet relief of sleep.

Instead, he found a little girl - small, brown hair and blue eyes, coating the world in flour, standing on a bench as she made it snow. He had no fucking idea how children aged, so she could be anywhere from ages one to twelve. Somewhere in that spectrum, surely.

(_don't think about your Child of Surprise and how she's probably the same age, _ Geralt thinks to himself, and then promptly curses)

The girl then looked at him, cocked her head, and looked at Jaskier. Jaskier did a weak wave back.

"You wouldn't know where the sorceress is, right?" He asked, feeling ridiculous. Shit, maybe _ this _was the sorceress. Were they supposed to be this young? Could they even look that young? What the hell was going on in that magic school?

"Mommy?" The little girl asked, and maybe Geralt did a small take back. Sorceresses couldn't be mothers. Right? That was a basic, fundamental thing of life. The little girl, meanwhile, unaware of Ger alt's thoughts, kept speaking. "Oh, mommy's doing a party! I can't go, but she's on the inner sanctum! Just go out that door and turn left at the end of the hallway!"

Then, jumping out of her bench, she went around the kitchen, grabbing a too-full jug, liquid spilling out in tiny droplets. By the smell, apple juice. She reached him and offered it like a sacred thing, and then smiled, showing a missing tooth.

"Mommy likes it best!" She chirped, and then spared Jaskier a look. "Is your friend sick?"

"Something like that." Geralt grumbled, and started to make his way out of the kitchen, before pausing, looking at the girl who stared at him with too-big eyes. "Thanks."

He did not wait for her answer, opening the door and going to find the mage.

* * *

"Undress." Yennefer said, eyeing the witcher up and down like a particularly tasty piece of meat. He kind of was, were she honest. Maybe the widow three houses down wouldn't mind babysitting Ophie tonight…?

No. Focus on the _ prize _ , Yennefer: that boyfriend of the witcher had a Djinn, and Yennefer was willing to kill him to give her daughter magic. Well, _ maybe _seriously maim, since the witcher was there to save that human's skin. How very odd, but considering Yennefer herself had saved a human, maybe there was some logic for him, as well.

"I don't think we have time to pay beforehand." He is so worried about the human, it would be funny in any other situation. Yennefer, however, waved his thoughts away.

"It's not that. You, quite frankly, are stinking up the whole place, and I really don't want to be chased out of this place because _ you _made the upholstery smell like your brown horse."

Geralt grumbled, and started to undo the little buttons of his armor. Yennefer waved his clothes away, and he closed his eyes, visibly counting to ten.

"Fine." He strutted around the full bathtub, and Yennefer dropped a few rose petals on it as he slipped into the warm water, his back turned to her with a quick wave of her hand. Yennefer then started to undress herself, mindlessly making the mirror turn by itself so he wouldn't be getting any peeks that she didn't dictate. As she waded into the water, already murky (gross), he spoke up again. "How does a mage have a child?"

"My, my, of all people, I didn't think _ you _would need a lesson on baby-making." Yennefer smiled to herself, humming. It earns her a grumble, which Yennefer counts as a small victory, song-worthy, almost. Hadn't he said that the possessed man was a bard? Maybe Yennefer could have a small chat with him after she extracted the djinn from him.

"You know what I mean." He replied, and Yennefer, purring at the feel of the hot water, made a small wave with magic.

"So what makes a witcher seek a djinn?" She asked, changing the subject abruptly. If word got out she had a crown princess with her, that fool king might try and take her daughter away (she still has ears and knows that Virfuril still hasn't the male son he so much wishes for, that he murdered for, and she pities the poor, young queen who has to suffer under him).

Yennefer would rather be the slayer of a king, causing chaos to a country, than to let her daughter be queen.

Geralt, meanwhile, made a vague noise, which sounded like words, muffled. She hummed in answer, and with a sigh, he spoke in audible levels.

"I couldn't sleep."

A guffaw left Yennefer's lips before she could stop herself.

* * *

After the bath, Yennefer kissed Geralt softly, the lipstick imbued with magic planting the suggestion deep in his mind; mechanically he let go of her, dressing himself up as if a marionette whose strings she pulled, and left to get out of her way. Humming to herself, Yennefer dressed herself and went to find the bard, feeling in her hands the spell ink drying. She tugged her sleeves down: Ophie did not need to see those. To keep her pure, for a little more, was of the essence.

Ophie was with him, as asked: her daughter liked to help Yennefer with her job, and taking care of people was her best trait. Unfortunately, tonight wasn't one of her best days: Yennefer found her daughter curled up by the bard's side, sleeping half on the floor, head laying on the bed, and she smiled at the girl. Gently scooping her up, Yennefer took her to a small couch that was set aside, levitating a pillow and a blanket from the bed (it wasn't like the man asleep on it was using them, anyway, right?) and putting her daughter gently to sleep.

She had finished tucking Ophie in when the sounds of a witcher rampaging through the town graced her ears, and Yennefer smiled to herself.

* * *

By morning, it was time. Yennefer arrived in the mayor's room that she had appropriated for herself with some of Ophie's favorite breakfast foods, and found the girl by the side of her patient, changing the wet rag on his forehead.

"Has he been sleeping well?" Yennefer asked, sliding by Ophie's side, putting a stray strand of the little girl's brown hair behind her ear. She gave the girl an unpeeled apple, cut in small parts, and the girl dove in.

"He hasn't awaken yet!" She chirped between bites, and Yennefer gave Ophie a genuine smile, fishing pieces and bites from the breakfast. Better to do such a complicated spell on a full stomach.

When they finished, Yennefer clapped her hands, and the mess disappeared. Ophie looked at the man, whose eyelids twitched, as if he was about to wake up.

"Great! Now how about you go and grab the smelling salts from the kitchen while I do some magic tricks to heal him up, hm?" Yennefer knew there weren't any in the kitchen, but she doubted that Ophie did. The little girl, however, nodded and smiled, before turning tail and running.

Yennefer closed the door with a magic spell, locking it, before taking off her clothes, climbing into bed, the magic circle making itself by her will.

The bard, by her side, started to stir; good. Time to work.

* * *

Jaskier had been having a very good nap, unlike a _ certain _ somebody. Then he woke up, was almost straddled to death by an insane but gorgeous mage, which, in any other situation would've been kind of hot weren't she covered to her shoulders in black, ritualistic ink, chanting like her life depended on it and begging him to do the third wish. Which, _ no thank you ma'am I left my cat on the stove. _

The bard had never run so fast in his life, going to the outside and grabbing the little girl-slash-insane-sorceress-daughter's when the house started to tremble and, you know, do things houses weren't supposed to, such as crumble.

The girl protested, but Jaskier had been on a speedy mission, and took them both out of the crumbling building in record time. The little girl protested, and Geralt looked at her for a long moment. Jaskier really hoped Geralt was thinking _twice_ about his whole child of surprise thing and started to act on it. Golly, it was almost like Jaskier had to move the entire thread of the witcher's life himself!

"Geralt, thank the heavens above you're here!" Jaskier babbled, as the two started to walk away, the little girl following behind like a sad lost puppy. "'There was this weird woman, who was casting magic, and - "

"That's my mom!" The girl huffed, crossing her arms, and Jaskier spared her a glance. "And I should be waking you, not mommy!"

"Yeah, then tell your mommy to not be making weird rituals on top of sleeping men!" Jaskier retorted, childish as the girl, and Geralt rose an eyebrow at that. Jaskier turned back to Geralt. "Listen, we have to get out of here, she was asking me for the djinn's wish and she had an amphora painted on her skin and - "

"Take care of the girl." Geralt said, useful as ever, and _ went inside the crumbling house. _ The girl tried to follow him, but Jaskier pulled her by the crook of her neckline, like a cat mom.

"Let me go!" The girl yelled, and Jaskier solemnly ignored her as an elf who looked vaguely familiar sped by, focused on the witcher who was most definitely going inside the crumbling building._ Good luck trying to stop Geralt, _ Jaskier thought, as he went to try and do the same thing.

* * *

When the witch's nest is destroyed with Geralt inside, Jaskier falls to his knees. The little girl, playing in the dirt and drawing figures, barely spares a glance to the destruction.

"Mommy is not dead," She said, although it sounds like she's trying to convince herself of it. "Mommy said she can't die. Right?"

Jaskier isn't listening - he's busy, mourning Geralt, making sweet promises that the witcher will never hear, confessing feelings the witcher will never reciprocate, words spilling almost meaninglessly out of his lips.

The elf - Chireadan; they had some time to chat since Jaskier wasn't dying anymore, trying to distract a kid whose name she refused to reveal, so it was _ the kid _ and _ the gir _ _l_ and _ hey you how about we don't get close to the door of the crumbling building _ \- made his way around the windows, as if his ears were picking up on something Jaskier couldn't hear over the ringing on his own ears.

"Oh, they're alive." A pause. Jaskier rose to his feet, stumbling to the window, the girl a moment or two behind. "Huh."

_ Huh _ indeed.

"Mommy's well?" The little girl asked, and reality dawned on both of the present adults, deciding to definitely not let her see what was happening.

* * *

Yennefer went outside, still adjusting her clothes (very shameful; she was a mother's, for fuck's sake, she wasn't supposed to be having one-night stand's with almost-strangers in ruins), leaving Geralt asleep on the floor.

Ophie was busy, singing along the bard, who seemed distressed by the second.

"Ophie." She called, and her little girl raised her head, eyes growing huge at the sight of Yennefer, and she said something in a small voice to the man before getting up, dress dirty with soil, and then making her way to Yennefer, throwing herself in her mother's arms.

"Mommy!" She yelled, burying her tiny face on Yennefer's waist, then looking up. "You're alive! I told Jaskier you couldn't die."

The bard had a name, apparently.

"I can't, sweetling. I can't leave you alone, can I?" She mussed up the girl's brown hair, giving him the only polite enough nod Yennefer could muster, and pointed to the inside of the crumbling building. "Your witcher is alive. Asleep, but alive."

"Wow, you're so bad you put him to sleep?" Nevermind politeness. Yennefer glared at him as he scurried inside, and then set her eyes back on Ophie.

She kneeled down to face the little girl's eyes, putting her hands on her shoulders.

"Now, how about we go to our house, grab everything that hasn't been pillaged, and hit the road, huh? We can even sleep in that inn next town over."

Ophie's eyes sparkled at the thought of traveling; she had always been too wild to stay stuck in one place.

"Okay!" She chirped, letting go of Yennefer carefully, as the mage rose, gently grabbing Yennefer's (inside out, damn it) skirts. "But can I hold your hand, please?"

Smiling at her daughter, Yennefer offered her the hand she wished to hold, finding Ophie's dirty hands (perhaps a bath, before traveling away) on her own a second after.

"For you, my sweetling? Everything." Yennefer said, and it was true.


	3. Chapter 3

Ophie was burning with a fever, and not one of her spells and herbs and other usual tricks seemed to be doing what she needed them to do.

It had been a few years since the Rinde disaster, and since then the two had wandered around, staying weeks on some towns and months on others; lately, however, they had been staying near Hengfors, Yennefer doing spells for a living and Ophie, fourteen and growing like a stalk, picking up odd jobs around, mostly sewing. Yennefer hadn't known when she learned how to sew, but figured it was probably during their eight years or so of travel, when coin was scarce and they had to make sure the clothes lasted.

(sometimes, during their travels, she meets Geralt. Ophie would always find some entertainment for herself - the innkeeper's children, talking excitedly with a bard, listening to old women tell tall tales and myths, and Yennefer, after a quick fight with the witcher, would fall in Geralt's bed. If she makes sure to leave before he can wake up, is it anyone's business but her own?)

But that had been long ago: now Yennefer could put a permanent roof over Ophie's head, her little magic shop was booming with business, and Ophie was sewing. Or, at least, she was: Yennefer had been doing lunch while Ophie finished the last touches on a dress, and then the world tilted, her little girl gasping for air, clawing at her throat, letting the cloth fall to the ground, eyes bugged out, terrible rasping sounds coming out of her throat.

If Yennefer wasn't any faster, Ophie would've choked to death, and she would have never forgiven herself for it. Instead: she ran to her daughter, assessed the scene, and put her in the deepest healing sleep she could manage, sweat pouring off her skin like a fountain as she struggled to make Ophie sleep deeper, deeper, and deeper .

That had made Ophie stop gasping for breath, but made the fever start in its stead: Yennefer levitated her down to the bed and started grabbing herbs, started remembering spells that had been long forgotten.

Nothing worked. Herbs crumbled when they came in contact with Ophie's tongue and spells deflected like arrows. Yennefer started turning to the myths, the fantastic, and as she read about how a dragon's heart could cure anything, a knight stumbled into her closed shop.

"We are closed." She said, not even bothering to raise her eyes from the books she was reading. The knight looked like a thing any strong wind could knock down, wobbly, as if learning to walk.

"I need your help." He said, and she rose her violet eyes, bored, ready to tell him to fuck off. "King Niedamir sent out a request for parties to kill a dragon…"

Yennefer tuned him out, merely nodding along as she went. What were the odds that, when she needed a dragon's heart, one would all but fall in her hands?

* * *

Yennefer asked the woman next door (no children, husband off to war in Nilfgaard, a mercenary) to take care of Ophie for a few days, and the woman, seeing the color of the gold being offered, barely noticed as Yennefer sew a spell in her skin to prevent her from doing Ophie any harm.

She kissed her daughter's forehead goodbye, the heat burning her lips to a boil, and prayed that this would work.

* * *

She looks at Geralt, and then at the bard whose name she forgot. Yennefer was sure he was the one who taught Ophie how to sing Toss a coin to your witcher all those years ago, and she needles him for it. Discreetly, of course.

"And where's the girl? Didn't think you would be the type to abandon a child." Geralt asked, subtle as the sun during noon. Yennefer smiled sweetly, too much teeth to be friendly, and the bard huffed, trying to hide a shiver, muttering something or another about insane witches .

"I don't recall it being any of your business, witcher." Yennefer replied, before taking her leave, deciding to go back to the knight's side.

* * *

At night, Yennefer gave the knight a quick spell to think he slept with her, and she then portals into her home. Ophie, still under the magical sleep, seemed tranquil - but the red tint of her cheeks, more pronounced in candle light, told Yennefer that she wasn't as peaceful as she hoped. Putting away a strand of brown hair from the girl's face, she felt the stickiness of sweat on her skin, and decided that she should change Ophie's clothes.

She was careful doing so, magical spells doing most of the work Yennefer did not trust her hands to do as she digged around the drawers for clean clothes. She soon found what she wanted, and had the magic change Ophie's clothes as well.

Yennefer didn't dare touch her, afraid that, if she did, her little girl would take a turn for the worse and die before Yennefer could even do anything about it. She still did not know what to do to make sure Ophie lived a long life, unafraid of death as Yennefer was.

Ophie was going to grow old and die, one day, and Yennefer would stand in her funeral and watch. She couldn't find a djinn, and she still had found no way to give Ophie a magical talent. If maybe she spoke to...

"You got sloppy." Chided Tissaia, as if a ghostly apparition, and Yennefer twirled around, hands in claws, ready to throw in something to make the headmistress go away. The much older woman, sitting content on a chair, reacted in no way Yennefer could see. "Hello, Yennefer. It had been… A while."

She ignored the fake politeness, the almost frozen tone of voice: Tissaia, of all people, had found her, and had been standing in Ophie's room for who knows how long. Had she noticed, Yennefer wondered, how the girl resembled Queen Kalis just the tiniest bit? Would it doom her?

"What are you doing here?" She hissed, trying to protect her daughter from view. The woman tilted her head, like a curious owl, but no emotion whatsoever showed in her face. Typical .

"Word got around that you had a child. One gets curious about the means." Rising from her seat, Tissaia looked around the room, doing a small, slow and tortuous circle, touching, carelessly but full of carefulness, the little trinkets Ophie had gotten from their travels around. "If my math is correct, wasn't she born around the time you left Aedirn?"

Yennefer's hands formed a fist, her jaw clenched as thoughts went around in the speed of light: if Tissaia knew the truth, what would she do? Yennefer was ready to kill for Ophie, but would Tissaia go gently into the long night? Could Yennefer even manage to surprise the headmistress?

No. Yennefer was an accomplished mage, that was the truth, but one did not age as much as Tissaia without being able to survive murder attempts, not in their profession. What she could do, then, was to try and get the woman on her side.

"I found her after I failed to save queen Kalis." It wasn't a lie, not really; it was more of a stretching of truth, as thin as a spider's web but just as strong. "And I don't think Virfuril would be pleased if I came back with a child."

Especially so when he tried to kill the baby.

Tissaia, meanwhile, stared at her carefully, moving closer to Ophie. Yennefer tensed, teeth pressed so hard one against the other her jaw was starting to shoot in pain.

The woman stared at her daughter for a moment so long it seemed the world was holding its breath (or maybe that was just Yennefer), before nodding.

"Yes, I don't quite think he'd be pleased." Letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding, Yennefer nodded weakly. "A life on the streets, depending on the public opinion of magic to survive, however, doesn't seem like it'll suit her."

"I think I know what suits my child, Tissaia." The answer gets a noncommittal hum from the woman, who went back to her seat. "What are you doing here? Or, better yet: what do you want from me?"

"We have an opening at Aretuza. Perhaps you would like the position." Tissaia said, hands in her lap, eyeing the girl, still asleep in her bed. "Your girl could be a student there, too."

"She can't do magic, and I won't let her become of the eels at the bottom of the well." Yennefer growled, and Tissaia shook her head.

"A pity, then." Tissaia replied, before disappearing; Yennefer's knees buckled at the same time, grabbing her daughter's hand and clutching it, almost as if that, if she let go, Ophie would be taken by the headmistress.

* * *

By the next morning, the knight had been murdered, and Yennefer destroyed a tree in her anger. The Reavers gave her a passing glance, the bard screamed way too loudly for such an early hour, and Geralt simply raised an eyebrow at her - probably the most emotion she got out of him in literal years. Yennefer ignored him, more worried about the dragon - she needed the heart, and her ticket to it had been murdered in cold blood.

She was sure it was that Reaver, the one with the nasty tongue - Boholt, if she recalled correctly.

No matter, not right now. Shaking her head, she undid her tent, deciding that if she couldn't get someone to dirty their hands for her, she would kill the dragon herself .

* * *

They're walking again, Yennefer more marching than walking, stomping the soft earth behind her feet like it is for blame every single one of her problems when Geralt came after her, grabbing her arm like a doll.

His hand burns her through the thick clothes, and Yennefer hissed at the touch, separating herself forcefully from him. There's a small interrogation, Yennefer confirming it wasn't him as she keeps marching forward, barely listening as he speaks.

"What even do you need a dragon heart for?" He asked, baffled by what she spoke, and Yennefer whirled, using a sharp nail to stab at his chest, punctuating her every word.

"Isn't it a cure-all? My daughter is sick, and nothing works. Let me have this." She hissed, not raising her violet eyes to meet his golden ones.

Geralt put a hand on her shoulder, and Yennefer looked at him.

"I'm - I don't want her to die. She's just fourteen, she barely lived." Yennefer said, and Geralt hummed, vaguely understanding. At least she hoped he was. "I don't know what overcame her, it was… Too sudden. One moment she was fine, the next one she was gasping for breath, and it was horrific to watch her suffer."

Geralt stared at her for what seemed like a small eternity.

"Let me guess. Spells don't work and she's on healing sleep." A blink, and then when Yennefer was silent, he kept speaking - probably a decade-shattering record, all thanks to her. Bards would sing about this moment. "She's got magical overload. Jaskier gets that if he is around me too much. Let her rest without magic for a while and she'll be fine, the fever will break, and for the breathing, make her inhale some hot water fog."

Pause. Yennefer looked up at him, mouth opening and closing, mind forming half-baked questions that Yennefer wasn't sure if she wanted answered.

Still - did it matter? If he had an answer, then fine. It just meant that her quest for a dragon's heart was foolish, but she was already here, and Yennefer wasn't a quitter. Usually.

"You make a more wonderful mother than I'd ever make a father." He let out a longing sigh, looking away, into the green of the mountains, as if his eyes saw something else other than the forest. "Maybe I should give you my child to raise."

The sound of a bard stopping to play his music too suddenly played in her ears, and she looked at Geralt - really looked, trying to connect dots - for a long moment.

"What, now?"

" Fuck ."

* * *

"Oh, so you - you , of all people!" Yennefer whisper-shouted, as they made their way back to the dwarves, Geralt's patron and the bard that seemed to accompany him everywhere, "Have a Child of Surprise and have not met him yet?"

"I don't want children. I don't think a child is suited for this kind of life we lead."

"Really? How funny of you, then next time, don't invoke Law of Surprise and expect a field of wheat. What did you think would happen, really?"

The bard popped in between the two, one arm around Geralt's shoulder. He kept a careful, respectful distance from Yennefer, which was probably because he recalled how she had tried to extract a djinn from him. At least he wasn't as dumb as he looked to be.

"Say, has anyone ever told you two that discretion isn't your forte?" Geralt grumbled in response, and Yennefer seethed quietly, deciding that the next time the bard woke up, it would be with actual crow's feet on his face.

* * *

After the whole dragon business - and after Yennefer got her revenge on Baholt -, she went back home to Ophie. With trembling fingers, she portaled them away to a deserted place, into a deserted home, and then, after laying down Ophie in an ancient bed, making sure there wasn't more magic than normal in the air (every spell she did took around two to five hours to clear up the air and go back to normal magical levels; the simpler the spell, the lesser the time) before dispelling the healing sleep. She had heated water the normal way for the first time in decades, and gently raised Ophie's thin body (too thin) to allow her to breathe the vapour easily.

She waited for what seemed like a lifetime and a half, but was probably just a few minutes; when Ophie opened her eyes, slowly, she smiled.

"Hi, mom." She greeted, voice raspy from being asleep for days. "I feel kind of sluggish today…"

She yawned, and took a deep breath, stretching her body.

"What happened? Where are we? Last thing I remember was…" She put a hand to her throat, looking around, and Yennefer petted her daughter's hair.

"You're safe now, sweetling."


End file.
